This One Stranger Things Theory Explains a 9-Year-Old Season 1 Mystery, Sets Up the Finale, & is the Key to Future Spinoffs

Stranger Things Season 5 just explained a mystery that’s been troubling viewers since the show first began. The last two seasons of Stranger Things have told stories at a greater scale than ever before, and we’re literally heading into an end-of-the-world scenario for the Season 5 finale. Given that’s the case, it’s hard to believe all this began with the vanishing of Will Byers, a child kidnapped on November 6, 1983, and whose disappearance triggered all the chaos that has since befallen Hawkins.

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But why did Will survive the Demogorgon? The end of Stranger Things Season 1 revealed that both Will and Nancy’s friend Barb were taken to the same place, subjected to exactly the same mysterious process. Will was transformed, bonded to the Mind Flayer, and he’s now become a sorcerer in his own right. In contrast, Barb died, and Hopper and Joyce saw her corpse in the Upside Down as they struggled to get Will out. It’s always seemed odd that Will survived when Barb did not – but now one theory suggests why.

The Key Lies in Vecna’s Season 5 Plan

Vecna has seen Will as a sort of “proof of concept,” and he’s attempting to duplicate his mysterious process with the twelve children he kidnapped from Hawkins in Season 5. This time, though, he hasn’t been in a rush to choose his targets; he seems to have been monitoring his targets from March 1986, when the rifts opened at the end of Season 4, through to November 1987. Why did Vecna take so long to select targets, and why did he specifically choose these twelve children?

Speaking to the kids, Vecna claimed he selected them because they have latent powers. Viewers naturally tend to dismiss Vecna’s words as lies, but the best lies always have an element of the truth in them. What’s more, the Duffer brothers have often tended to draw on X-Men comics lore for inspiration (they haven’t always been subtle about it, either), and latent mutants really are a thing in X-Men lore. They’re mutants whose powers wouldn’t have triggered if not for an outside influence of some kind.

According to the Stranger Things Broadway show, that’s exactly what happened with Vecna himself; he was exposed to a realm called Dimension X when he was a child (Season 5’s Vecna flashbacks are exploring this story, so it’s clearly canon). Will, too, has developed powers after exposure to the Upside Down, and he’s now being described as a Sorcerer – someone with innate abilities. We now know Dr. Brenner’s experiments to create new powerhouses like Eleven involved exposing fetuses to Henry Creel’s blood, a similar process.

Looking back, then, we can now theorize why Will lived and Barb didn’t. It’s simply that Will was lucky, because he had latent powers, while Barb did not. There’s a parallel with Dr. Kay’s experiments in Stranger Things Season 5, with Kali revealing Dr. Kay’s experiments are killing those she injected with her blood. Kali thought the problem lay with her own blood, when it was actually failing because Dr. Kay didn’t know how to recognize people with the potential to give birth to children with powers.

Stranger Things Season 5 Has Already Set Up Its Spinoffs

If this theory is correct, Stranger Things is already setting up its spinoffs – and it’s not exactly been subtle. Back in Season 5, Volume 1, Mike encouraged his sister by telling her of “Holly the Heroic,” setting up a new generation of D&D players and notably assigning her the class of Cleric, the same one held by Will. He described Holly as someone with the power to open interdimensional portals, which seems like deliberate foreshadowing of the most overt kind.

Assuming Vecna is telling even half-truths to the children he’s kidnapped, then he has just exposed twelve kids with latent powers to the kind of forces that triggered both his and Will’s abilities. He’s essentially doing the same thing as Dr. Kay, trying to create more powered people, except he wants to use them as his pawns. Most of the children have essentially become Vecna’s followers (the Cult of Vecna in Eddie’s Dungeons & Dragons game back in Season 4). But Derek knows the truth, and Holly the Heroic is sure to resist Vecna’s influence.

Kali has told Eleven that everyone with powers need to die when the Upside Down is destroyed. Viewers have rightly noted that Kali, Eleven’s “Lost Sister,” is acting suspiciously; it’s possible that’s because she has figured out why Vecna chose these 12 kids, and intends them to die as well. If this is the case, the Hawkins heroes have a powerful traitor in their midst, one who will no doubt act against them at a key moment. But if anyone survives, Kali is right; the cycle will continue.

Many have already noticed that Nell Fisher’s Holly Wheeler seems to have more screen-time than some of the stars this season. Cynics have even gone so far as to suggest its setup for spinoff, and this theory explains why that’s the case. We’re essentially moving on to a new generation of Stranger Things children, and any of these survivors can serve as stars of the next story; the potential is almost unlimited.